00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today, I'm speaking with
00:00:08.220Dr. Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental thinker and activist.
00:00:15.220We can choose our different solidarities, and all the violence and all the brutality
00:00:20.760of 500 years of colonialism, 200 years of industrialism, 30 years of neoliberal globalization,
00:00:27.920All of that, we can find creative ways to transcend by realizing that A, we are one humanity on one planet, and B, that both humanity and the planet are rich because of their diversity.
00:00:43.080vandana shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist a leader in the international
00:00:50.760forum on globalization and of the slow food movement founder of navdanya and of the research
00:00:56.420foundation for science technology and ecology and a tireless crusader for farmers peasants and
00:01:02.220women's rights she is the author and editor of many influential books including two from
00:01:07.520Synergetic Press, Reclaiming the Commons, Biodiversity, Indigenous Wisdom, and the Rights0.88
00:01:13.040of Mother Earth, and the forthcoming Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy,
00:01:18.880a global citizen's report on the corporate control of technology, health, and agriculture,
00:01:23.860which is slated for release in February 2022.
00:01:31.060Well, Vandana, welcome back to the show.
00:01:34.140I am so looking forward to speaking today and yeah, thanks so much for sharing your time with
00:01:40.220us again. It's good to be talking to you again for the wild. Yes. Well, so I want to begin our
00:01:49.420conversation with an epistemological grounding of the two divergent forces you've described as
00:01:55.400determining our present global reality. In your book, Reclaiming the Commons, Biodiversity,
00:02:01.940indigenous women and the rights of mother earth you write quote the sovereign option and colonial
00:02:08.220option emerged from two different paradigms and worldviews leading to two conflicting ownership
00:02:13.600systems an age-old system based on community rights still the dominant one in rural and
00:02:19.900indigenous communities combined with national sovereignty and the ownership system of corporate
00:02:25.000defined intellectual property rights based on individual private property and enclosures of
00:02:30.460the common, end quote. Now, this fundamental understanding of the differences between a
00:02:37.960sovereignty framework of the commons and a colonial framework of neoliberal ownership
00:02:42.860serves to undergird the conversation we're sharing today. So to start us off, can you speak to the
00:02:51.000importance of the commons for the well-being of the earth? And if you believe there can be a
00:02:56.200paradigm shift away from the colonial worldview by those of us who are very much inculcated within
00:03:01.600a colonial neoliberal paradigm. And what might that look like? You know, the enclosures of the
00:03:10.480commons and colonialism go hand in hand. The enclosures were taking place in England,
00:03:16.900but it was the colonization of the land in order to take the land away from the peasantry,0.96
00:03:22.120to turn the peasants into cheap labor for the factories and the mines and it was a necessary
00:03:28.420part of industrialism which is celebrated without knowing how much was taken away from people in
00:03:38.100terms of the inclusions of the commons but colonialism was the enclosure of the commons
00:03:42.940of the colonized lands you know in India land was a commons we never had private property and then
00:03:49.580we had individual use of land but a use right and an ownership right are very different
00:03:55.940use requires that you take care of that piece of land over generations maybe whereas property
00:04:05.740allows you to buy and sell and trade and commodify and speculate and destroy
00:04:10.620seed was never intellectual property so commons and that's what my life has been shaped by over
00:04:19.240the last 35 years now of saving seeds and starting the napania movement when you ask is it too late
00:04:27.760to reverse the enclosures no it can never be too late because the commons is what makes life
00:04:36.260for a short period in the industrialized countries as a result of the workers rights
00:04:45.220movement as a result of the anti-slavery movement it became possible to in a way by the means of
00:04:54.680living you know and that is collapsing right now at this point in these two years of the covid
00:05:02.500crisis and the recurring climate disasters should wake anyone to the fact that the structures that
00:05:12.720were put in place by colonialism, by industrialism, by globalization, are now being appropriated even
00:05:19.760further. And this ongoing commons enclosure is the enclosure of life itself for the majority of
00:05:29.700people. So we will have to learn to reclaim the commons in order to live. We will have to reclaim
00:05:36.880that which is vital to life the land the water the seeds the knowledge community in order to
00:05:44.620have a life because you know within a decade they don't even expect money they expect
00:05:50.800cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrencies will be allocated to you according to how you fit into a
00:05:58.320a credit system just like already it's happening in china most people will be reduced to throw away
00:06:05.240Well, unless we reclaim the commons and start commoning our common future.
00:06:13.320It's so fascinating and a disturbing way to imagine what is on the horizon.
00:06:20.940And I would just like to hear your thoughts on how long you believe this current death culture can last.
00:06:28.760You know, do you think there will come a time soon where it won't be a choice to choose food or seed sovereignty?
00:06:35.240As peak oil and peak soil and peak water are seemingly very close
00:06:41.920to a time that is now, what do you think also the ones in power
00:06:46.360will do when the resources they've been profiting from
00:06:49.140can no longer be extracted at the same rate?
00:06:54.720When you ask if the system will give, it is already giving.
00:07:00.960I mean, look at the fact that here was Mr. Elon Musk
00:07:31.260it is and it is collapsing if only we were looking it is not thriving if at all it is in place it's0.57
00:07:42.560in place through huge violent force and imposition coming from a country like india where i've seen0.81
00:07:50.740the green revolution imposed through force people didn't choose chemicals they were forced to have
00:07:57.540chemicals in agriculture. People did not choose to eat bad GMO soya oil. It was dumped on us and
00:08:05.340our oils were made illegal. And that's why I have always participated in movements to defend
00:08:12.280our right to live healthy lives. So when we talk seed sovereignty and inclusions of the common,
00:08:18.420it's not about a futuristic need. We not only are doing it today, have to do it today,
00:08:25.260But if you look at COVID, how did people respond, people who were free to think and find the solutions, they realized there's a deep connection between vulnerability to an infection and your immunity through food and what you eat.
00:08:42.620And this is scientifically established over millennia.
00:08:46.380Let food be thy medicine, Hippocrates said.
00:08:49.380In Ayurveda, the oldest science of health and living,
00:09:02.080More and more people are shifting to ensuring their food is good.
00:09:06.800And where the people don't have a choice
00:09:09.080is where they're more vulnerable to disease.
00:09:11.260If you look at just do the mapping of COVID deaths, most of them were linked to comorbidities, as they call it, you know, junk diets because you can't afford to eat properly and diabetes and cardiovascular problems.
00:09:25.600So people are actually dying because of a bad food system and health comes from a good food system for the health of the planet and the health of people.
00:09:36.300So reclaiming the commons of life, growing our food, reclaiming seed sovereignty and food sovereignty is not a luxury.
00:09:43.920It's a necessity. And that is also the reason why the powerful have always wanted to control food.
00:09:51.360Kissinger wrote and said, food is a weapon. You control food, you control people.
00:09:58.760right now the biggest investments of big tech you would imagine the big technology barons
00:10:06.080are they're already the richest and that at some point it would be enough no now they want our food
00:10:12.580they're hungry for our food and they want to make it artificial they want to make it in the labs
00:10:18.100with GMO soya and cellular meat and cellular milk and cellular this and but it will need feedstock
00:10:25.140And they're looking at turning agriculture even bigger acreages of Roundup spread, soya and corn, which will now not be commodities, but will become raw material.
00:10:38.400And I think it's the biggest violation of food to reduce it to raw material, to then turn it into bad systems, which will further aggravate the planet's instability in climate change, in terms of species disappearance, but also our own health.
00:11:08.400So for a while, they will use coercion, for a while, they will use force. And more and more people will either not have the money to participate, or will have a consciousness that will say, I will not participate.
00:11:18.780I want to explore this consciousness a little bit more. And I'm wondering if you might speak
00:11:28.420to your own story a bit for listeners about choosing to fight in the struggle for collective
00:11:32.240liberation, earth healing. And, you know, for those of us who are positioned with such
00:11:37.280unearned privileges, who oftentimes feel disconnected from the issues affecting
00:11:42.940different classes. I'm wondering, what do you say to people who feel that they can choose
00:11:48.960privilege over the struggle for liberation? And I bring this up not as a way to judge
00:11:55.300folks. It's more that this system is also designed to keep people complicit,
00:12:01.340and especially in the States, to keep people comfortable enough to not want to fight in the
00:12:07.200struggle? The number of people who are having their comfort maintained is becoming fewer and
00:12:20.940fewer. Again, let's go back to these two years of COVID. The number of people who became unhoused
00:12:29.360in America, you know, the 2008 crisis that put people in tents looks small compared to the number
00:12:35.920of people who can't afford to pay a rent and are out in the streets and are being criminalized.
00:12:41.800The number of people who've lost their jobs and livelihood. So the crisis is very, very deep.
00:12:49.000Now, the system has a very clever way of taking a small part of society and humanity and hanging
00:13:02.880a carrot and saying participate and you will earn much more and help us so the other day you know
00:13:10.600zuckerberg was launching his meta in india and there were full page ads in every paper about how
00:13:18.160they were going to have about a million trained people to push the metaverse which is this
00:13:24.500artificial reality and virtual reality which is now the owner of facebook
00:13:29.100um well you know his stocks collapsed meta lost 129 billion dollars and he lost about 21 or 22
00:13:41.900billion dollars in one flip of a button so we are talking about a very very fragile privilege system
00:13:51.700very very fragile it's a house of cards and it can collapse anytime and those who have
00:13:59.900the privilege of choice need to make their choice for the earth not on the terms being offered
00:14:09.360by those who have made them the new digital slaves you know there's always been different0.97
00:14:14.760slavery the africans captured from africa and taken to the cotton fields then then there was0.72
00:14:22.400slavery in the factories the automobile factories then there was slavery now of a digital kind
00:14:31.760and in the digital kind of slavery the slaves are being paid hugely to make them forget that
00:14:37.980they're slaves and they have no idea where their options are being locked but I realize this
00:14:47.200because at Navdanya the movement I started where we have an earth university and we offer courses
00:14:52.780the two groups of Indians who come for our courses on ecological farming and return to the land and
00:15:01.100seed saving and ecological farming one group is the it industry and they're earning huge amounts0.98
00:15:09.060and they are getting empty with them and the next group is the people from finance so those are the
00:15:15.320two classes earning lots they have privilege everyone else is being excluded and i think we
00:15:21.520need a new solidarity not a new solidarity based on narrowness but a new solidarity between other
00:15:29.820species and us you know this very artificial division between nature and humans which is still
00:15:35.000dominating so much of the discussion you know the wild is not where people are absent it's not the
00:15:42.960uninhabited the wild is where people live in harmony with nature and 80 percent of the biodiversity of
00:15:49.860the planet today is in the 20-25 percent of the land left with indigenous people that's how we1.00
00:15:56.420will protect nature and that's how we will protect our future and for that we will have to give up0.98
00:16:02.060these constructions that say they're primitive you know if they don't stamp on every ecological
00:16:07.860process of the earth they're primitive you are living in a hut in alaska you've chosen that
00:16:14.320you have chosen a solidarity with the earth and the snows we can choose our different solidarities
00:16:21.320And all the violence and all the brutality of 500 years of colonialism, 200 years of industrialism, 30 years of neoliberal globalization, all of that, we can find creative ways to transcend by realizing that, A, we are one humanity on one planet, and B, that both humanity and the planet are rich because of their diversity.
00:16:46.380So we will have to overcome these divisions that make the other an enemy because you're not exactly like me, you know, therefore you're my enemy. And this is very Cartesian thinking. This is very either or thinking. It's extremely brutalizing for people.
00:17:06.340And this polarization is kind of overwhelming the world, not because people by instinct love to hate each other because you're somewhat different, but it's because a very small group of people.
00:17:21.320And, you know, they made just during the lockdown where people lost lives, livelihoods, work, they made $1.5 trillion extra just sitting around, you know, and harvesting the lockdown.
00:17:32.840they want to make sure that people don't unite to protect their and each other's lives and that's
00:17:40.160why they create new kinds of divide and rule along race around ethnicity around gender around
00:17:49.000class we need to fight for justice the fight for justice does not mean hating each other
00:17:56.020We need to overcome racism, but that does not mean having an animosity because someone else has a different scar of the skin, or even more seriously, because someone else was a different trajectory of history.
00:18:12.680We have to create a common trajectory. That, to me, is the ultimate reclaiming of the commons, our common future.
00:18:18.880beautiful thank you for that and i i definitely want to talk more about the fall of late stage
00:18:27.120capitalism but before that you were touching on indigenous knowledges and in their book
00:18:33.560indigenous food sovereignty in the united states restoring cultural knowledge protecting
00:18:38.060environments and regaining health rudolph mclachlan provides an essential understanding
00:18:44.700of the symbiotic relationship between the health of food and the land as non-separate and in
00:18:50.560constant relationship with each other. Now they write, quote, an indigenous food sovereignty
00:18:55.040framework connects the health of food with the health of the land and identifies a history of
00:19:00.000social injustice as having radically reduced indigenous food sovereignty in colonized nations,
00:19:05.460end quote. Now this understanding is crucial for framing the present-day extractive agricultural
00:19:11.440practices in India and around the globe as a continuation of the colonial legacy.
00:19:17.360Provided this, I'm wondering if you could touch upon the differences between a food sovereignty
00:19:22.420or seed sovereignty framework that accounts for the health of soils, the sanctity of seed,
00:19:27.360water, and air, against the more myopic aims of food security that are based solely on the
00:19:32.900health of the individual and very much disconnected from food's relationship to ecosystems.
00:19:37.920For example, I'm thinking about monoculture engineered fields designed to be, quote, more nutritious. But in your view, how do traditional ecological knowledges support food sovereignty? And how might food security measures actually collude with bio, agriculture and neoliberal understandings of the earth?
00:19:58.300You know, when neoliberalism was being forced on India, and it was 91, and in that period, during the election campaigning, our prime minister of that time, you know, was standing for elections, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.
00:20:17.300And then the politicians were campaigning,
00:20:21.360including the person who became the prime minister.
00:20:44.440And it was in a peasant area where most of the peasants are women in northern Karnataka.0.52
00:20:50.500And I remember this woman getting up and saying, A, we don't deal with dollars.
00:20:56.840Secondly, we wear saris. We don't have pockets.
00:21:00.420So the idea of food security has been so manipulated and messed up that it has become absolutely meaningless.
00:21:08.300It can mean Monsanto growing more GMO crops and the claim that it will have more yield, which is not true, or a GMO rice, which is a golden rice, will produce more beta carotene.
00:21:23.000But you don't look towards rice for beta carotene.
00:33:51.900Thank you so much for those reminders. They're so important to just remember that this is not something to forget or play around with.
00:34:03.120And following this thread, you provide an understanding of not only the sovereignty of India's patent laws, but of the sovereignty of life against biopirates seeking to extract local, traditional ecological knowledge and organic seeds for profit.
00:34:19.980Now, in an article you wrote for LifeGate titled, We Are Earth, We Are Nature, Patenting
00:34:26.060Biodiversity Means Stealing the Nature of Life, you write, quote, the patenting and piracy of life,
00:34:32.160of biodiversity, of natural processes, and nature itself, including the minds and bodies of human
00:34:37.880beings, is a violation of spiritual law, ecological law, biodiversity law, and human rights law, end
00:34:44.440Now, in response to the surge in recent decades of the patenting of bioresources, you've posed
00:34:51.980this question with utmost clarity. How can you patent that which is already alive? So can you
00:34:59.040speak to the jurisprudence that protects the commons and prevents biopiracy and comment on
00:35:05.020the ways that patents for bioresources are undermining national sovereignty?
00:35:09.580I woke up to the question of patents on living systems and seeds at a meeting in 1987 when there were no GMOs, but the industry was seeking to have patents on seeds through GMOs.
00:35:26.880Their main purpose for introducing GMOs was owning seed, and they said it so clearly, that this is where our profits will come from, because if you have a patent, you have the right to prevent anyone else from using what is your patented property, intellectual property, so the farmers would not be able to save seed.
00:35:48.160and then they wanted to make an international law which became the trade-related intellectual
00:35:53.540property rights agreement of the WTO through which they wanted to make it illegal for any
00:35:59.880farmer anywhere in the world to have their own seeds to save their seeds and share their seeds
00:36:04.720and I listened to them and I said a seed is not a machine you invent seed is evolution
00:36:13.340in constant unfolding it carries millions of years of memory of the past and millions of
00:36:22.500years of potential for the future it is not your invention so the two things that I started to do
00:36:30.580was save scenes I made it my life's mission but also work with my parliament and work with
00:36:36.700our government to make sure our laws did not suffer the illusion that seed is an invention
00:36:44.200created and invented by the poison cartel and that's why we have in our patent law article
00:36:51.5803j which says plants animals and seeds and any part of them are not inventions therefore they
00:36:59.580cannot be patented and this is the clause that Monsanto has been very troubled by because they've
00:37:04.360wanting to own the seed and this has come in their way they are still trying they're still trying to
00:37:10.760to undermine our biodiversity law you know we have an international law called the convention
00:37:16.000on biological diversity and i had a big role with my government and other governments in 92 at the
00:37:22.740earth summit in framing a lot of the issues the three things we put into this law were
00:37:29.280these are not open access systems you know they belong to communities biodiversity belongs to
00:37:35.220communities and it belongs to countries therefore sovereignty was put into that law
00:37:40.200sustainability was put into the law that it is a duty to use biodiversity sustainability
00:37:46.260and the third was yes they must be sharing on fairness and justice though they are and we
00:37:53.700implemented this with our national biodiversity act and i was invited by my government to also
00:37:58.700play a role in that. And just a few days from now, I will be going to Indian Parliament to give
00:38:05.280witness to how they're trying to change that law and undermine it, to remove the items of
00:38:10.820sovereignty, to remove the items of conservation and sustainability, and turn it into a big
00:38:16.760biopiracy law so that they can patent everything in India, the hundreds and thousands of medicinal
00:38:23.600plants that are recorded in ayurveda and are used by local communities the thousands and thousands
00:38:29.760of seed varieties that we have saved protected multiplied and distributed over these last 35
00:38:35.920years so you know whatever we did 35 years ago is in a way being brought right back and we have to
00:38:46.280just get strength from our own work the strength from our communities and build resilience and
00:38:53.000also hold accountability and use every level there is. When you asked, how do you frame
00:39:02.320laws beyond these corporate laws of private ownership? That's where we have to bring
00:39:09.780our cultures of the commons back. And I remember 1989, it was before Seattle, June 5th Environment
00:39:19.720day i worked with communities 200 villages gathered and they did this beautiful declaration
00:39:27.020of the biodiversity and they said all this diversity are our relatives they cannot be our
00:39:33.600property and therefore we do not accept any law that tries to reduce it to intellectual property
00:39:39.020and then they had a beautiful letter writing campaign to michael moore was the director general
00:39:46.740from different parts of india in different languages they wrote postcards postcards
00:39:51.660were still available those days and they wrote and said you're overstepping your jurisdiction
00:39:57.620our relationship with biodiversity is about ecology it's about ethics it's about our culture
00:40:03.900it's not about international trade and then mr michael moore came to you know he came to meet me
00:40:09.900and he said i've been told i should talk to you about this i said no you've got the letter from
00:40:14.600these 6 000 villages go to those 6 000 villages there's no shortcut to democracy and the idea of
00:40:21.000living democracy the idea of earth democracy grew out of that process so that's how we create a
00:40:27.720common law a common law of our oneness with the earth oneness with diversity recognizing that
00:40:35.380diversity is our kin our relationships it is not monsanto's intellectual property and now mr gates
00:40:42.120intellectual property if he would like to have the gene editing which is where he's trying to go
00:40:46.780and and this is where commoning and reclaiming the commons becomes more and more important
00:40:55.060the more the greed and the limitless grab grows the more the need for defending community and
00:41:04.400common schools. Absolutely, yeah. This power grab that's seemingly more and more desperate as
00:41:15.260the fall of late-stage capitalism becomes more of a reality is disturbing to witness. I mean,
00:41:23.180I just am wondering, with people like Bill Gates, what do you imagine them doing as
00:41:32.100the apocalypse becomes near like when you think about these people and nations in power
00:41:40.840and with their capitalization on life itself and the hoarding of resources
00:41:46.760what do you imagine them doing and how do we as common people knock them off the power pedestal
00:41:54.100that they're on and also just you know their own power through their own wealth but also of course
00:42:00.020their power is connected to so much political and global support so yeah like i guess it's a
00:42:05.860two-part question of how do you see the manifestation of their desperation as late
00:42:13.300stage capitalism falls and what can we as common people do to knock them off their power pedestal
00:42:18.480well as far as their desperation is concerned it is exhibited in the level of coercion and
00:42:28.540violence they're using in terms of over-regulation and over-policing of society.
00:42:36.740And everyone has been kind of, you know, made to look only towards a virus.
00:42:42.520But behind the virus, they're just taking over our lives.
00:42:47.320I mentioned how the tech giants have made 1.5 trillion additional while they prevented